What if the DM picks the flaws?

[Particle_Man]

A house rule idea: players can have two, one or no flaws. But the DM chooses which flaws after the player chooses how many.


What would be the pros and cons of such a rule?

[Crake]

A house rule idea: players can have two, one or no flaws. But the DM chooses which flaws after the player chooses how many.


What would be the pros and cons of such a rule?

It depends on the DM really, if the DM is willing to pick feats that don't completely grate against the player's character concept, then it can be interesting, but if the DM uses it to pick, say, the -2 to melee attack rolls for a melee character, then that's kinda terrible.

[Eurus]

It depends on the DM really, if the DM is willing to pick feats that don't completely grate against the player's character concept, then it can be interesting, but if the DM uses it to pick, say, the -2 to melee attack rolls for a melee character, then that's kinda terrible.

Yeah, the problem with (most) flaws is that they're either meaningless or extremely painful, and boring either way. But they do give you more room to play around with feats at low levels, so I usually just allow them with the assumption that everyone will take flaws that don't hurt them.

[Crake]

Yeah, the problem with (most) flaws is that they're either meaningless or extremely painful, and boring either way. But they do give you more room to play around with feats at low levels, so I usually just allow them with the assumption that everyone will take flaws that don't hurt them.

I've found that flaws tend to come up more often than people make out. Melee brutes forced into a situation where they have to make ranged attacks with their shaky flaw, inattentive and unreactive come up pretty much universally, vulnerable happens whenever you're about to get attacked by anything. Now sure, typically a lot of those penalties are applied to rolls that would have already been rather bad, but saying that they're meaningless implies that said character would have always failed regardless of their roll, which is rarely the case. It's only at the highest of levels where the disparity between a good bonus and a bad bonus become larger than the size of the dice being rolled that this is the case.

I've definitely had players who've regretted taking a flaw at one point or another. Maybe not for long, but definitely in that moment when they realised their main schtick isn't an option and they gimped their only option currently. Going from needing a 17 to hit to needing an 19 to hit is quite a big difference for example, as it literally halves your DPR.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

As a player, I tend to go for flaws that a) will be meaningful without being crippling and b) make some sense. For instance, my Rogue/Crusader pirate character was hard to heal with magic, which reflected his stubborn pride (fittingly, he could heal himself just fine with his maneuvers, but being healed by others didn't work so well) and also lined up with his weird magical resistance (Spell Reflection ACF) and his appearance (scars that wouldn't heal). Admittedly, it ended up not coming up all that often, because our Bard (with healing spells) dropped out, and I managed to dodge every attack by the ability damaging foes we were fighting (which would have taken me many times longer to heal from naturally), but the potential for it coming back to bite me was definitely there, I just got lucky.

Personal anecdote aside, I think the sweet spot of "relevant but not too harmful" is potentially easier for a DM to hit than a player, since there's no conflict of interest, but picking one that fits with the character (or can be worked in) is easier for the player. Perhaps the DM provides a list of acceptable flaws based on the build, and the player gets to choose from those?

[Mordaedil]

At our table we tend to work with the DM to determine our flaw and often hash out something that is more akin to an RP flaw than a mechanical one. This usually comes about because players usually find ways to overcome their flaws at higher levels anyway and they start to either hamper the character in a ridiculous way or not matter much if at all. To the point where we've floated a different house-rule:

Players may pick up to two flaws at level 1 with a lesser flaw and a greater flaw (greater flaws have more impact and lasts longer). At level 10, the lesser flaws are gone and players with no flaws are awarded a feat. At level 15 the greater flaw is gone and players with none or one flaw can pick a feat. This allows players to either chose to have more feats early on, or get more feats at higher levels when they can probably do more with their feats. Players that started with flaws can retrain their feats with respect to treating their feats as if they got them at level 1 or 10/15 as applicable. We allow this mostly to avoid any grievance between players feeling they were dealt an unfair hand.

[Fizban]

The problem is, for me anyway, that if a Flaw is needed then the build is probably pushing its feats harder (to a higher power level) than I want anyway. I am far more likely to change feats or prerequisites or something else if it's necessary to make something work, than simply allow a cart-blanche feat in return for some penalty, even if it's a penalty of my choosing.

There are a lot of ACFs/other variants that let you trade X for a feat, which is much more sensible- but those are pre-specified feats in exchange for the loss of specific class features, and if there are so many or they're created on demand for anything imaginable, then the limited number of feats just loses more and more meaning.

If an extra feat is not needed to make something work, then the extra feat is just extra, and it can either wait, or you can make something else wait. I find this choice much more meaningful than simply taking some arbitrary penalty. Meanwhile the game already has mechanics that result in penalties because of a character's flaws- even trading stat points would be more appropriate, presuming the game is run on a sufficiently limited point buy.

[Mordante]

At our table we tend to work with the DM to determine our flaw and often hash out something that is more akin to an RP flaw than a mechanical one. This usually comes about because players usually find ways to overcome their flaws at higher levels anyway and they start to either hamper the character in a ridiculous way or not matter much if at all. To the point where we've floated a different house-rule:

Players may pick up to two flaws at level 1 with a lesser flaw and a greater flaw (greater flaws have more impact and lasts longer). At level 10, the lesser flaws are gone and players with no flaws are awarded a feat. At level 15 the greater flaw is gone and players with none or one flaw can pick a feat. This allows players to either chose to have more feats early on, or get more feats at higher levels when they can probably do more with their feats. Players that started with flaws can retrain their feats with respect to treating their feats as if they got them at level 1 or 10/15 as applicable. We allow this mostly to avoid any grievance between players feeling they were dealt an unfair hand.

As far as I am aware there are no lesser or greater flaws in the system. Your system reads a bit like power play.

I have one character with a flaw Weak willed -3 on will checks. Just having it disappear seems cheesy to me.

[Seto]

As far as I am aware there are no lesser or greater flaws in the system. Your system reads a bit like power play.

I have one character with a flaw Weak willed -3 on will checks. Just having it disappear seems cheesy to me.

I like their houserule. It's not cheesy to lose a flaw after carrying it for 10 or 15 levels, which is most of your adventuring career. In fact, it can be coupled with a narrative character arc, explaining how you're overcoming your personal limitations and progressing towards perfection. Which D&D represents well as a mechanical system.

The thing I like the most about it, is that players who don't take flaws also get feats, albeit later. See, the whole idea of optional flaws has always bothered me, because it's a minmaxing resource that will likely increase table imbalance. Since it's optional, a lot of people won't bother with flaws, and get no feats. Then some people will take painful flaws, as a roleplaying tool, and get feats. Then some people will take painless flaws in order to get feats (which is the "cheesy" part of flaws if anything is). It has limited impact on character power, but the principle of it never sat right with me.
With that houserule? It's an equal-opportunity power boost that benefits the whole table anyway no matter their mechanical mastery, and everyone chooses how their character benefits. Nothing cheesy about that.

[Mordaedil]

As far as I am aware there are no lesser or greater flaws in the system. Your system reads a bit like power play.

I have one character with a flaw Weak willed -3 on will checks. Just having it disappear seems cheesy to me.

Flaws are inherently cheesy. This just makes it a bit more transparent as a trade-off for early advancement. Every guidebook you find on D&D recommends taking flaws if your DM allows them, as the benefit always outweighs the downside.

[Vizzerdrix]

I did away with flaws. Instead everyone gets an extra starting feat.

[Quertus]

What if I've got an idea for a really quick character, used my bonus feat for Improved Initiative, and the GM gave me the flaw Interactive?

As long as the GM is designing the character, maybe they should roleplay them, too. Then, they can either go ahead and write single author fiction, or let the players run the world. That… might be interesting, actually - invert the usual gaming trope, and let the party be run by one player, and the monsters by a group.

[nedz]

Shouldn't the DM pick the bonus feat too then ? :smallwink:

The problem with this is that it risks DM favouritism — or risks the appearance of favouritism.

The old school approach would be to have a random table of flaws — which the player rolls for. This is a risk-reward type approach. This would fit a rolled stats - in order type game, but that's not for every group.

I don't allow flaws — they are an optional rule which makes for cheese.

[JoeNapalm]

The DM is already making the world, they should be relatively hands-off on the player characters.

3.5 is mechanically complex and inherently exploitable, but the way to address potential issues with that is to work with the PCs, not take their options away. Some things can be fine with one party or immensely OP with the next, depending on how that table works.

Flaws are fine -- a lot of games don't run long enough for many builds to start getting interesting, without them -- but obviously they should not be free and have some reasonable bearing on the character concept as a whole.

Of course, it also comes down to what kind of game do you want to run? Big damn heroes or Doctor Who levels of running? So many variables, hard to say yeah/nay to any one way of doing it -- but I would definitely not be okay with total revocation of player agency, no matter which side of the GM screen I'm sitting on.

-Jn-

[Xervous]

And this is why I like action points. Other systems have the right of flaws wherein there’s no permanent benefit, but if the flaw impacts a scene it grants an action point. Benefit now pay later just invites the player to try to circumvent the flaw.

As stated above GM choosing flaws for everyone risks favoritism. But if everyone is getting flaws for the free feats you might want to examine why they’re doing that and consider other tweaks that actually address the root causes.

[Railak]

What if I've got an idea for a really quick character, used my bonus feat for Improved Initiative, and the GM gave me the flaw Interactive?

Well aside from the obvious that the flaw would immediately go away, with unreactive you can't take any initiative boosting feats. Or you actually lose the flaw and the bonus feat it grants.

For me I'd say you'd need to have veto rights, and/or the DM would have to have pretty good idea about your character current and future so they don't pick flaws that will either "disappear" immediately, or make you unable to do things you're planning on later. I'm a DM, and our group uses flaws a lot. There's actually 3 players that I generally help to decide what flaws to take. Usually I'll suggest the easy ones, depending on their builds. One that I usually suggest is actually murky eyed, basically they just can't take blind fight.

[Lapak]

Shouldn't the DM pick the bonus feat too then ? :smallwink:

The problem with this is that it risks DM favouritism — or risks the appearance of favouritism.

The old school approach would be to have a random table of flaws — which the player rolls for. This is a risk-reward type approach. This would fit a rolled stats - in order type game, but that's not for every group.

I don't allow flaws — they are an optional rule which makes for cheese.Pretty much everything here. I don't allow them, but if I did, a random-roll approach would be how I'd do it. You're not very likely to get completely tanked by a flaw completely opposed to your build, but you're also not likely to land one that your character is built around making irrelevant.

Edit: And if it was a concern, you could do 'random table with one veto each for DM and player, chosen before the roll is made' if you absolutely couldn't bear to have a chance of ending up with a penalty to hit in melee as the flaw on your melee build, say.

[Thunder999]

The issue with flaws is they're either crippling or meaningless, either you're going to make those penalised rolls regularly and have really shot yourself in the foot, or you weren't ever going to make them (or rather, you were probably going to be so bad you may as well not, the 8 dex paladin with shaky, the fighter with inattentive and no ranks, the wizard with vulnerable who wasn't getting enough AC to make things miss anyway etc.)

Flaws as basically free feats with a penalty to something you were going to suck at anyway is mostly fine, giving everyone a couple of extra feats just makes low levels more playable and lets you actually pick up interesting ones without locking yourself out of PrCs.

[Zerryzerry]

I made a table and roll them after they choose how many. Removed some of the worst ones from the list, and I, as the DM, choose if it is too damaging for the build (assuming that someone with a -2 to melee attacks from birth would not have started the path of a barbarian for example).

it comes with some funny things (like our Goliath fighter getting Coward)